2 Peace of Mind Baseball Hitting Tips to Improve Patience

These baseball hitting tips are about how to work patience into your practice routine. This is by far the most wrestled with virtue in baseball, better yet, all sports.

The roar of the crowd, parent, player, and coach expectations, BIG league or college scouts watching, whatever it may be, can contribute to high levels of anxiety on the ball field. You have to exercise the right muscles in your mind to be able to deliver when what-seems-like everything is on the line.

And, with this baseball hitting tips article, putting it into physical practice, the mental part will surely follow.

Dictionary.com says this about patience,

"quiet, steady perseverance; even-tempered care; diligence: to work with patience."

The main goals of the following 2 baseball hitting tips are to keep your hands relaxed throughout the swing and to keep them back.

The benefits of being patient are:

Setting yourself up to go to the opposite field if need be

Chance for the most important 3 points to line up*

Maximize power and leverage in your swing mechanics

Recognizing offspeed pitches

*The major power points are your belly button, back knee, and back toe. Power, leverage, and balance depend on these three points lining up upon the finish of your swing...we'll get into more detail on this later.

Pitcher kneels about 30-40 feet in front of the hitter, and tosses the whiffles at regular speed.

Here's why this drill is so special...the pitcher has to speed up the arm to get the whiffles over the plate. The hitter sees fastball arm action, and as the ball approaches, it slows down because of the ball's distinct anatomy, giving a change up effect.

If you really want a challenging progression to this drill, try working away as the hitter takes the ball to opposite field.

Pitcher throws from regular batting practice distance. Vladimir Guerrero for the LA Angels of Anaheim used to play this game as a kid, where the pitcher would bounce the ball up to him trying to strike him out. That's why he's the best bad-ball hitter in the Major Leagues.

What makes this drill so special is the hitter has to keep hands relaxed and back in order to hit the ball with any authority. The thing you have to make sure the hitter does is to stay tall throughout the swing...let the barrel go down and get the ball, don't lunge down and slump the body to get to it.

If you want to do this drill with your team on the field, try throwing with bouncy Incrediballs or harder cored tee baseballs.

Both of these patience baseball hitting drills are:

Low maintenance,

Low cost,

Don't need a cage to hit in, and

Are fairly safe for kids to compete with.

One of the most valuable points I learned with hitting is less is always more. I'd rather do one or two drills that take care of 5 different issues than doing 5 different drills taking care of 1 issue.